China continues its amazing investment in infrastructure, including this:

A high speed train system, producing trains that travel nearly 200 mph and can get you distances from New York to Key West in 8 hours.

Investments like this make a ton of sense for large countries like China (and us) because (a.) they hire a shit ton of workers (China has said it has hired up to 100k people for it), (b.) they allow for more economic integration and economic prosperity for the parts of the country connected to it, and (c.) in an era where job immobility is at its highest in modern history for Americans, this provides a feasible way to travel great distances for poorer Americans.

But not only do we refuse to invest in this shit, we can't even muster the finances needed to repair the infrastructure we do have, made decades ago, in considerably less-modern ways.

HONG KONG — China began service Wednesday morning on the world’s longest high-speed rail line, covering a distance in eight hours that is about equal to that from New York to Key West, Florida, or from London across Europe to Belgrade.

Bullet trains traveling 300 kilometers an hour, or 186 miles an hour, began regular service between Beijing and Guangzhou, the main metropolis in southeastern China. Older trains still in service on a parallel rail line take 21 hours; Amtrak trains from New York to Miami, a shorter distance, still take nearly 30 hours.

Completion of the Beijing-Guangzhou route is the latest sign that China has resumed rapid construction on one of the world’s largest and most ambitious infrastructure projects, a network of four north-south routes and four east-west routes that span the country.

Lavish spending on the project has helped jump-start the Chinese economy twice: in 2009, during the global financial crisis, and again this autumn, after a brief but sharp economic slowdown over the summer.

The hiring of as many as 100,000 workers per line has kept a lid on unemployment even as private-sector construction has slowed down because of limits on real estate speculation. And the national network has helped reduce toxic air pollution in Chinese cities and curb demand for imported diesel fuel, by freeing up a lot of capacity on older rail lines for goods to be carried by freight trains instead of heavily polluting, costlier trucks.

But the high-speed rail system has also been controversial in China. Debt to finance the construction has reached nearly 4 trillion renminbi, or $640 billion, making it one of the most visible reasons total debt has been surging as a share of economic output in China, and approaching levels in the West.

Each passenger car taken off the older, slower rail lines makes room for three freight cars, because passenger trains have to move so quickly that they force freight trains to stop frequently. But although the high-speed trains have played a big role in allowing sharp increases in freight shipments, the Ministry of Railways has not yet figured out a way to charge large freight shippers, many of them politically influential state-owned enterprises, for part of the cost of the high-speed lines, which haul only passengers.

The high-speed trains are also considerably more expensive than the heavily subsidized older passenger trains. A second-class seat on the new bullet trains from Beijing to Guangzhou costs 865 renminbi, compared with 426 renminbi for the cheapest bunk on one of the older trains, which also have narrow, uncomfortable seats for as little as 251 renminbi.

Worries about the high-speed network peaked in July 2011, when one high-speed train plowed into the back of another near Wenzhou in southeastern China, killing 40 people.

A subsequent investigation blamed flawed signaling equipment for the crash. China had been operating high-speed trains at 350 kilometers an hour, and it cut the top speed to the current rate in response to that crash.

The crash crystallized worries about the haste with which China has built its high-speed rail system. The first line, from Beijing to Tianjin, opened a week before the 2008 Olympics; a little more than four years later, the country now has 9,349 kilometers, or 5,809 miles, of high-speed lines.

China’s aviation system has a good international reputation for safety, and its occasional deadly crashes have not attracted nearly as much attention. Transportation safety experts attribute the public’s fascination with the Wenzhou crash partly to the novelty of the system and partly to a distrust among many Chinese of what is perceived as a homegrown technology, in contrast with the Boeing and Airbus jets flown by Chinese airlines.

Japanese rail executives have complained, however, that the Chinese technology is mostly copied from them, an accusation that Chinese rail executives have strenuously denied.

The main alternative to trains for most Chinese lies in the country’s roads, which have a grim reputation by international standards. Periodic crashes of intercity buses kill dozens of people at a time, while crashes of private cars are frequent in a country where four-fifths of new cars are sold to first-time buyers, often with scant driving experience.

Flights between Beijing and Guangzhou take about three hours and 15 minutes. But air travelers in China need to arrive at least an hour before a flight, compared with 20 minutes for high-speed trains, and the airports tend to be farther from the centers of cities than the high-speed train stations.

Land acquisition is the toughest part of building high-speed rail lines in the West, because the tracks need to be almost perfectly straight, and it has been an issue in China as well. Although local and provincial governments have forced owners to sell land for the tracks themselves, there have been disputes over suddenly valuable land near rail stations, with the result that surprisingly few stores and other commercial venues have sprung up around some high-speed stations through which tens of thousands of travelers move every day.

Zhao Xiangfeng, a farmer in Henan Province, said a plan to build a minimall on his and six other farmers’ land near a station had been shelved indefinitely after he and three of the other farmers refused to lease the land for anything close to what the village leadership offered. He said he worried that local leaders might try strong-arm tactics against the farmers to force them to lease the land and revive the project.

The southern segment of the new high-speed rail line, from Guangzhou as far as Wuhan, has been open for nearly three years and already suffers from heavy congestion, which could limit the number of seats available for travel all the way to Beijing during peak hours. Regular travelers on the route said in interviews that the 800-seat trains are often sold out as many as 10 trains in advance on Monday mornings and Friday afternoons, even though the trains travel as often as every four minutes, and even lunchtime trains at midweek are often full as well.

If the return on investment is so lucrative than it will not need to be subsidized by our tax dollar, tax dollars that have already been spent before they are collected. The tax revenue collected is what? Half of what we spend? You are throwing up a pie in the sky payoff with no real numbers to back it up. The only real numbers in this conversation is the amount it will cost that the government does not have~

That's not how it works. You will have to take a haircut earlier, but it's worth it if it provides ROI every year in perpetuity.

Let's keep rewording the same things over and over I disagree with you and repeating why endlessly is pointless~

I am rejecting your argument because it's the same argument that justifies struggling companies cutting prices on your products to boost sales instead of investing in new factories, new stores, marketing, or research and development. Companies that are obsessed over short term costs lose over companies that invest into things that enable growth. tell me. Why do companies advertise themselves?

I am rejecting your argument because it's the same argument that justifies struggling companies cutting prices on your products to boost sales instead of investing in new factories, new stores, marketing, or research and development. Companies that are obsessed over short term costs lose over companies that invest into things that enable growth. tell me. Why do companies advertise themselves?

Carry on your personal crusade with someone else. You repeating the same bullshit worded differently is pretty lame. I could give two shits in a bucket if you reject my argument~

__________________The Trump campaign and Black Lives Matter movement are perfect for each other. Both sides filled with easily led and angry nitwits convinced they are victims~

No, it's because you keep responding with canned arguments. Like saying I only favor spending in projects I want, which has nothing to do with anything I've said in this thread or any other thread.

I will respond one last time, we cannot afford the up keep on the existing infrastructure we have now. Many of our bridges, sewer systems, levees are in desperate need of major repair or replacement. Your return on investment argument does nothing to address to very simple fact that the goddamn cluster **** of a government we have is ****ing broke. Good idea, bad idea whatever broke is ****ing broke~

__________________The Trump campaign and Black Lives Matter movement are perfect for each other. Both sides filled with easily led and angry nitwits convinced they are victims~

The #1 form of transportation will ALWAYS, at least for the next 200 years, be the car. Sometimes it is not feasible or possible to drive somewhere.

In that case, the plane will always beat rail. Both are inconvenient options that force you to uncomfortably sit with total strangers, but the plane will always be cheaper and faster, unless the government heavily subsidizes rail. If its a tie, people will fly. Businesses are not going to force their employees to use a train.

Other cultures are different, but in this country, no one wants to ride a damned train. Especially since the train carries the stigma, accurate or not, of possibly having to ride with very poor or "dangerous" people.

If you can guarantee cheap oil for that entire time, then this is true. A oil price shock changes the math significantly.

Edit: Also, millenials and those immediately before them attitudes toward cars are pretty different than those before them. They aren't as in love with cars as those that come before them.

I will respond one last time, we cannot afford the up keep on the existing infrastructure we have now. Many of our bridges, sewer systems, levees are in desperate need of major repair or replacement. Your return on investment argument does nothing to address to very simple fact that the goddamn cluster **** of a government we have is ****ing broke. Good idea, bad idea whatever broke is ****ing broke~

I am sorry I forgot in troll world debt doesn't matter, we can just print more money and get more loans

It's not troll world dipshit. It's reality.

If you can service your debt, then you aren't broke. When you factor in that the government can print money if they so choose, you're broke statement is even more laughable. When you acknowledge that the government can raise taxes and levy new taxes and you still insist that we're broke, then that just makes you a ****ing retard.

If you can service your debt, then you aren't broke. When you factor in that the government can print money if they so choose, you're broke statement is even more laughable. When you acknowledge that the government can raise taxes and levy new taxes and you still insist that we're broke, then that just makes you a ****ing retard.

Tax revenue around half of spending, trillions in debt and you think everything is fine. Just print more money!!! Raise taxes!!! Get more loans!!! Yes this is troll world because nobody is that ****ing stupid. I have fed you enough chubby troll find someone else to babble to

__________________The Trump campaign and Black Lives Matter movement are perfect for each other. Both sides filled with easily led and angry nitwits convinced they are victims~

I will respond one last time, we cannot afford the up keep on the existing infrastructure we have now. Many of our bridges, sewer systems, levees are in desperate need of major repair or replacement. Your return on investment argument does nothing to address to very simple fact that the goddamn cluster **** of a government we have is ****ing broke. Good idea, bad idea whatever broke is ****ing broke~

It does if it replaces many existing projects aimed at adding infrastructure instead of adding to it , including projects to add bridges, widen roads, and build new roads.

And again... People use the nation being "broke" as an excuse. But the same people would be bagging on this even if finances were in order. And by the way corporations often lever up on debt to finance investments that have long term ROI. Given our belief that the private sector does things better why should the public sector do it differently.